Promised Box Set

by James Kipling

  “Thank you,” she said quietly, reaching up and gently pushing on his chest until he backed up a few more steps and she had room to get off of the desk and get around him. As she walked away, she smiled broadly at him before turning around and biting her lip. She’d told herself she would take time after what had happened with John. She had no intention of changing that plan. Not at the moment.

  The phone on Mason’s desk began to ring and he hurried back around to his chair. He plucked the paperclip from his ear as he raised the phone to ask, “Hello?”

  Chapter 38

  Reggie had been a dead end. Literally. They arrived at the address online to learn from his daughter that he’d passed away six months earlier – shortly after the FBI reached out to Zoe and Dunmore Corp about their own case against Allan Peters. The daughter said it had been ruled an accident, a hit and run and the driver could have been driving drunk but no one came forward and there had been no witnesses. It was certainly suspicious to both Zoe and Aiden however unless Zoe was ready to reach out to Agent Boon with the information from Diane – which she wasn’t – then they simply had to cross Reggie off the list and keep moving.

  While the purpose of the trip failed in its purpose of moving the search for Peters forward, it succeeded in breaking away much of the awkwardness Zoe and Aiden had been feeling towards one another. There were still subjects they steered clear of but they could be in the same room as one another, talk with one another, and simply be friendly again, though they both felt a twinge of sorrow when they would part, knowing they’d passed up another opportunity.

  During her last conversation with Diane, Zoe had mentioned that she’d run through the entire list of names and told her about the trip she and Aiden took to find that Reggie had died. It was the first she’d said about Aiden’s assistance and she surprised both herself and Diane.

  “Aiden Butler? Charlie and Sandra’s boy? I remember the two of you used to be thick as thieves,” she reminisced. “Sandra and I had known each other growing up and when we first moved out from New York, she and I tried to get the boys together. We thought they would be fast friends but Aiden said he’d rather play with you and when we brought Lucas round the two of you, he was too intimidated to do much more than watch. I don’t think Aiden was too keen on sharing you,” she said with an amused chuckle. Her tone had shifted to a more somber note as she continued. “Of course, after the accident you and Aiden… well, you probably just needed someone who could help you pretend what happened… hadn’t happened. Being around Aiden would have been a constant reminder. And Lucas… he’s always been easily persuaded, especially by you.”

  Zoe had changed the subject and before the call ended, Diane had given her a new list of names. These were aliases she knew David had had prepared or used in the past. She wasn’t sure what documentation he had on each or whether the FBI had any of them. She warned that he probably would have scrapped all of them as useful identities and come up with a fresh list but cross referencing and searching for anything of the others could turnover new and untapped contacts – he had to get his forged identification and records from someone.

  Aiden was on his way down to her office to stay late working on going through more of the copied reports the FBI had turned over to the company in the last several months. They had decided the first step should be ruling out any of the aliases the FBI already had; those would already have been thoroughly investigated.

  As Aiden loosened his tie and carried his jacket over one arm, he mentally ran through what had become a mantra of sorts. It’s for Steve, he thought. Steve deserves justice; David Warner – Allan Peters deserves prison or the death penalty for all he’s done. It’s for Mom and Dad… and Jack. He’ll never remember them because of that bastard. And Gram. She shouldn’t have had to raise us. Grandmothers are supposed to be the ones to enjoy their grandkids, to spoil them and leave the discipline to their parents; not raise them. And I’m doing it for me. Because that son of a bitch tried to set me up to take the fall. Because he killed my parents and cost me Zoe… twice, he began diverging from the set list but was helpless to derail his present train of thought.

  If it weren’t for the boat accident, she wouldn’t have pulled away from me when we were kids. He took my best friend from me. And how long will it be till the police figure out how he managed to get someone to sabotage my car? The timing couldn’t be a coincidence. And again… she pulled away. I lost… the woman I love. Loved, he corrected himself sternly. The woman I LOVED. Past tense.

  He had reached her office door and knocked lightly before twisting the knob and pushing the door open. There were two boxes of reports and copied pages of Agent Boon’s notes that contained everything she and Mason had been given before and after her father’s accident. Aiden didn’t doubt that some of them where documents she had illegally copied and held onto for her own records.

  Zoe was sorting through the pages in her stockings. She’d kicked her shoes into a corner by one book case and the tailored suit jacket piece of her well-fitted pantsuit was thrown over the back of the sofa. The blouse she wore was sleeveless. Aiden took in the strength of her bare arms. They didn’t have the visible toning of someone who went to the gym religiously. They were soft but not slender. There were strong muscles beneath; when they were called upon to perform a task their quiet, remembered athleticism shone through. Like when she lifted the second heavy box from the floor to place it on her desk.

  The bending that task required drew Aiden’s attention to other aspects of her figure that were making it particularly difficult to concentrate so he knocked on the door a second time, louder and called, “Hello,” to get her to stop what she was doing and end his physical torment before it grew too obvious.

  “Come on in,” she said with a smile. “Make yourself comfortable. There’s a lot for us to get through. Do you have a preference for dinner? I was thinking Chinese or Thai but I tend to be a bit of a slob with those and I don’t want anything getting on these papers,” she began to ramble.

  Aiden pulled a bag with several plastic containers into view. “When I told Gram I’d be working late tonight she sent me with some of her lasagna. There’s more than enough here for two. She still thinks that since I’m older than Jack I need to eat more than him.”

  “You can eat more than him,” Zoe teased.

  “But neither of us eats as much as Gram gives us,” he replied, setting the bag on the floor by the couch. “I think there are cookies in there as well.”

  “Score,” Zoe said, moving to investigate and pulling out a large sandwich bag with chocolate-chip cookies. “I’ve missed these,” she mumbled through a mouthful, groaning with pleasure as the first few bites hit her stomach.

  Aiden smiled and took up a strategic position behind the box she’d been sorting through when he appeared. He’d heard her groan like that before and his body had responded in a similar fashion on that occasion too. He cleared his throat. “What categories were you using? I’ll finish this so the two of you can be alone,” he said indicating the bag of desserts. “Just leave me at least one,” he requested.

  She took all but two of the cookies from the bag and returned it to the rest of the dinner his grandmother had packed. Coming over to stand beside him, she pointed with her free hand to the piles she’d been lining up on her desk. “More than ten pages, five to ten pages, and less than five. I figured one of us could start scanning the longer reports for the names and the other could start with the shorter ones since there’re more of ‘em. We should meet in the middle.”

  He laughed. “So not based on what is actually supposed to be in the reports then.”

  Zoe shrugged. “We’re searching for needles in a haystack. What’s the difference if some of the hay is technically beige while the rest of it is taupe.” She held her last cookie between her teeth and reached for the short stack of long reports before moving to her chair behind her desk. Aiden took the looming stack of one to four page reports an
d went to the sofa to read them. The boxes formed a convenient barrier blocking one another from their line of sight and helping keep them each focused on the task at hand.

  After an hour in which the only sounds were the turning and discarding of pages, the squeak of Zoe’s chair as she rotated and shifted position, and the creaking of the leather sofa as Aiden discarded one report to take another, Zoe finally stood up and arched her back to work out the kinks. “Well I’ve got nothing but an eye spasm. You?”

  Aiden tossed the report he’d been looking through onto his finished pile. “Nope.” He closed his eyes and began rubbing them. “Just the beginning of a headache.”

  Zoe looked over at him with concern but when he noticed, he brushed it away. “No, not like that. I’ll be fine. I just need some food and a break. I’ll run to the break room and heat this up,” he volunteered taking the bag from its spot on the floor.

  “I’ll clear a space,” Zoe said with one of the boxes already in her hands. Aiden disappeared and she took advantage of the free sofa to put both boxes and replace the documents. One box had all the ones they’d gone through and the other those yet to be read. Even with both of them looking through everything, it would take at least a few more hours to finish and so far they hadn’t found anything useful; not a single mention of any of the aliases Diane had given her.

  She pulled some napkins and plastic silverware from a drawer in her desk where she usually stashed snacks. She’d run out the week before and hadn’t restocked. But there were still a few beers mixed in with the bottles of water in her mini-fridge. She pulled two out and popped the top on one taking a deep drag. Beer wasn’t a favorite of hers; she preferred wine or something hard mixed with something fruity. Since those weren’t available, beer would have to do for now.

  Aiden came back with the reheated lasagna on a cafeteria tray someone had stolen for the break room. Since the sofa was taken, Aiden found himself forced to sit across from Zoe at the desk as they both dug in, furiously hungry.

  “You’ll have to extend my compliments to your Gram,” she said between mouthfuls. “This is better than Café Torre but don’t let anyone there know I said that.”

  “I’ll let her know,” he mumbled through his own full mouth. Swallowing and taking a sip of beer to wash the rest down, Aiden paused in his eating. “So do you think it’s a good thing or a bad thing that we haven’t been able to find any of these names in the FBI’s reports?”

  “Wish I knew,” Zoe said, setting aside her empty container and wiping her mouth on a napkin. “I don’t suppose we’ll find out till we start searching for them online and see what we get for hits. If we had more information on them, I could see if Mason would put us in touch with the connections he had who ran the first background check on Allan Peters.” She let out a loud, frustrated sigh that bordered on becoming a scream. “Sorry,” she said quickly, propping her elbows on the desk and resting her head against her palms. “I just… this all feels like a wild goose chase. I’m sorry I dragged you into this. I shouldn’t have – I was just trying to – I wanted to… make things up to you,” she finally admitted quietly. Her volume had been dropping with each interrupted start.

  Aiden set his empty container aside before reaching across the space and wrapping a hand gently around one of Zoe’s wrists. Her head slowly rose and when she was looking at him he told her quietly, “You don’t have to make anything up to me. There’s nothing you did that you need to apologize for.”

  “Yes there is,” she insisted. “What I did was… inexcusable. It was horrible and selfish and… I’m sorry. I know you were mad at me and you had every right to be—”

  “I understand now – well, I understand better now – why you left and… Okay,” he said, realizing he was still holding her wrist and letting go enough to take her hand instead. “It did hurt and I was mad… but I’m not anymore. At least, not enough to stay away from you.”

  “You should. I don’t deserve a second chance,” Zoe told him, removing her hand from his grasp. She shoved herself back from the desk and stood looking out the window over the darkening city. “Actually, I think this would technically be a third chance and I am completely certain that that’s way more than I deserve to have.”

  “Do you want it?” Aiden asked from behind her. He had risen and come around her desk. She could feel the heat of him along her back as he didn’t hesitated to get closer to her. She felt a surge of lust in her gut and an eager tension in her thighs as the memory of what had happened the last time they’d been alone in her office after hours came rushing back to her. “Because… I still want you,” he whispered in her ear and she could feel how much he meant it. His arms came up slowly around her and he gently pulled her back against him.

  “Yes,” she whispered turning in his arms, reaching up and pulling his mouth to hers. His hands clamped tightly against her back for a moment before drifting downwards and pulling her hips to his sharply, causing her to gasp with surprise, breaking their kiss. Her hands drifted down and began undoing his belt buckle while his pulled her blouse up out of the waist of her pants.

  Aiden groaned as Zoe’s hand slid into his pants and out of sight. “Wait,” he said, roughly and broken at first as he trembled amidst her eager ministrations. He reached down and held her wrist, guiding her hand for a moment longer before pulling her hand free and repeating, “Wait.”

  Fear flashed through her as she wondered what she’d done wrong. He said he wanted me. Aiden blinked to clear his mind and focus for a moment then moved to the side of the window to draw the blinds. “Make sure the door is locked. I do not want anything interrupting us.” Twisted the curtains’ rod one direction to no effect before trying the other direction, he stepped on the heels of his shoes to free his feet and began undoing the buttons of his shirt with one hand.

  Zoe rushed to close the office door and double-checked the lock. She pulled her blouse off over her head and felt the fabric of her pants slide smoothly down her legs to puddle at her feet. Stepping out of them she saw Aiden was down to his boxers and socks. She smiled at him as she approached, reaching up behind her back to undo the clasp of her bra. He slid the straps down her arms, lowering himself slowly to his knees as the garment fell and taking first one of her breasts then the other into his mouth, his tongue teasing her nipples while her hands wound their way into his hair.

  She shuddered in pleasure and took a step back but found nothing to brace herself against as he reached his knees and she felt his hands stroking her thighs, moving round to her backside and tugging down her panties. He grunted as she tightened her grip in his hair and redirected his head from its journey between her legs. Pulling him back to his feet, she stepped out of her fallen underwear and backed around until she felt the edge of her desk dig into the heated flesh of her buttocks and prayed silently it was sturdy enough for what she hoped it would need to withstand.

  Aiden carefully nudged the computer monitor and laptop out of the way, clearing a space for them while Zoe rose to her toes and edged herself backwards onto her desk. She leaned back putting her weight on her hands, and spread her legs in invitation. Aiden slid her chair back a few feet to give him room to crouch over her. Beginning his journey at her breasts once more, he kissed his way down to her navel before she grew impatient and lifted her legs, wrapping them around his hips and pulling him closer.

  He chuckled against the hot, quivering skin of her belly and reached behind his back to unlock her legs and pull back. He lightly bit the inside of her left thigh as he caressed her right. She could feel sweat beginning to bead in the small of her back and inched herself forward, easing herself down onto her elbows and arching in anticipation. She didn’t care whether he used her mouth on her first or not; she desperately needed him to touch her.

  He grinned and held her legs a little wider apart as he began to demonstrate how deftly he could use his tongue. Zoe writhed and moaned. Her back began to ache and her arms to shake as he fought to hold he
r still long enough for her to finish properly. The fingers of one hand found an old phone message and she crumpled the paper as Aiden slid his hands under legs easing them up and over his shoulders to allow himself easier access to her. Spasms rippled through her body as she threw her head back, cried out, and felt her entire lower half succumb to a state of warm, fluid languor.

  Aiden let her legs fall from his shoulders as he rose above her and kissed her hard and deep, his tongue offering her a taste of herself as he and his hardness pushed her onto the hard flatness of her desk. Her pulse racing and the strength of her muscles returning, she pushed back against him, forcing him back to his feet and herself up into a sitting position. He looked at her with hungry eyes, his boxers halfway down his thighs.

  With a slight nudge from her foot, she pushed him down into her chair. Still breathing heavily and with every beat of her pulse throbbing between her legs, she eased herself off of the desk and onto her knees, but only long enough to slide his boxers off the rest of the way before straddling him on the chair. Her limbs were damp with sweat and she was slick from the success of his earlier assault. He slid into her easily and deeply.

  She paused for a moment and bent her head to his for a gentle and earnest kiss. “I missed you,” she whispered as she rocked her hips and took him in even deeper. His hands slid up to her waist as she rocked her weight back, eager to take him in again.

  He pulled her to him and thrust upward. “I missed you too.” He kissed her throat and she wrapped her arms loosely around his neck as they found an easy rhythm and she rode him until his fingers dug into her hips and she felt him buck beneath her. She clutched him tightly as she rose and fell, buoyed along on her own waves of pleasure.